


Temptations of the Body, Precautions of the Mind

by scarecrowfan



Category: The Nice Guys (2016)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Post-Movie, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 02:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7149215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarecrowfan/pseuds/scarecrowfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jackson finds himself on the precipice of a decision that could destroy the life he's built up for himself. Should he make the smart choice, or the right one?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Temptations of the Body, Precautions of the Mind

**Author's Note:**

> First fic in the new fandom, I hope you guys enjoy! It's so exciting to see the archive grow by the day, even before the DVD release.

The first thought Jackson had, upon meeting Holland March, was that a strong breeze could have probably knocked the man down. He soon came to learn that Holland was by no means fragile. Time after time, Healy had watched the man walk away from situations that would have killed most people. Battered and bruised, sure. But never anything a trip to the hospital and the passage of time wouldn’t fix.

Even so, this was the same man that Jackson had arrived to find drunk into a near stupor at two p.m. on Thanksgiving. Holly had confided in him then—cheeks red with humiliation, blue eyes misty with unshed tears—that this was the first anniversary of the house fire.

First anniversary of his wife's death, and Holland had dealt with it in the only way he knew how.

On the island, beside the cookie jar and usual assortment of beer cans, sat a partially thawed turkey. The kitchen table itself was littered with an assortment of groceries, a few of them actually unpacked: macaroni noodles, milk, shredded cheeses, canned stuffing. A handful of potatoes, a quarter of them peeled, crowded the kitchen sink.

Factor in the mostly empty liquor bottles strewn throughout the living room, and it didn't take a professional P.I. to piece together the story. Holland, as he so often did, had tried to be a good father to Holly. To say that this particular attempt had failed miserably would be a considerable understatement, even in comparison to his usual fuck ups.

Jackson had proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon and much of the night attempting to salvage what he could of the holiday for Holly. The first step had been putting Holland to bed; a glass of water, aspiring, and a plastic bowl were all left by his bedside. The second step was a bit more complicated, and involved him preparing something that resembled a Thanksgiving meal. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing—the kid deserved the bare bones, at least.

The turkey turned out a bit dry, the mashed potatoes runny, and the stuffing over-seasoned. Looking at Holly's smile as she ate, anyone would have thought she was having the best meal of her life.

So was Holland March, as he had once drunkenly described himself, invincible? Not even close. The guy was a tragic news story just waiting to happen.

But neither was he this fragile, untouchable thing, liable to break at the lightest pressure. So why did he seem like that to Jackson? Why was he so afraid to touch Holland?

_Because,_ his mind supplied helpfully, _you don’t know how to touch something without breaking it._

His marriage to June was a prime example of this—a rocky, unsteady thing before Healy had even agreed to ‘til death do us part’. He’d blinded himself to the problems, continued his day to day life expecting everything to settle into the well-worn, familiar routine of before.

And then The Dinner happened. It was only in retrospect that Jackson could assert having reacted to the news with _equanimity_ , even to himself. The divorce left him with no house (conceded), his car (fought for), and a box containing only those things he couldn’t bear to part with.

Jackson’s small apartment above the Comedy Store, with its exposed sink and tank of saltwater fish—only a thin wall separated the ‘bedroom’ from the rest of the place—had been a welcomed change from his life of before. It was a comfortable existence that Jackson Healy had carved out for himself, one piece at a time.

And yet.

Here Jackson was, feet dangling over an empty pool at three in the morning, staring at the man stretched out besides him on the diving board and genuinely considering reaching out and breaking everything that had built up since the first day he stood on the rental’s steps.

Holland, for his part, remained blissfully unaware of Jackson’s inner turmoil. Whiskey sloshed over the sides of the tumbler as March waved his hand in a drunken attempt at a rhythm, off-key tune hummed low under his breath.

“Keep that up, and half the pool will be filled with whiskey by the end of the month,” Jackson remarked idly, watching the way Holland's fingers curled and tightened on the glass. The slow way his thumb traced its rim.

“Sounds like a brilliant fucking idea—a pool full of nothing but whiskey!”

“And cigarette butts, leaves, the occasional small animal passed out due to alcohol fumes…”

“You just don’t like the idea of me having fun.” As intoxicated as Holland was, he still managed a convincingly hurt tone in his response. Even more worrying was Healy’s initial reaction to it: a knee-jerk instinct to take the words back, to distract Holland with something that would bring the easy happiness of before back to his demeanor.

Jackson could’ve kicked himself right then. What was this, some 15 year old’s first crush? His masturbation habits as of late certainly seemed to indicate as much. It was ridiculous, frankly; a grown man in his 40s having to beat off in the shower every day before work.

But what else was he supposed to do? Jackson couldn’t spend his work day thinking about the way Holland’s lips wrapped around a bottle, the way his throat would flex as he swallowed. How he’d fidget with his hands, fingers twitching anxiously until they were wrapped around a cigarette or a glass. Sometimes both.

So rather than spend most of his work time distracted and partially hard, Healy opted for quick, guilt-ridden jerk off sessions during the shower. Each time, he told himself it would be his last. And each morning, Jackson would wake to thoughts of Holland’s mouth and fingers filling his head and a full erection trapped by his briefs.

“I’ll take your silence as agreement, since I always suspected as much, anyway.”

Healy was jerked back to the present by Holland’s voice, realizing only then that he’d never actually answered the detective. Just filled his head with thoughts that no man in his right mind would utter out loud.

By now, March had sat up and scooted his way to one end of the diving board, a mere arm’s length from his companion. Jackson, still caught up in thoughts of soft lips and agile hands, found himself unable to divert his focus now that the real thing was so close.

The near-intimacy of it made Healy nervous in a way that fighting no longer did. Adrenaline pumped through his system, unbidden, as if his body was preparing him for something. Fight or flight.

Jackson wanted to do neither.

Instead, he allowed his shoulders to slump as a deep sigh passed through his lips. What the fuck was wrong with him, thinking of Holland like that? It wasn’t the first time Healy had thought about other men, but those thoughts were normally brief. There one second, pushed aside the next—outliers on which he had no reason to linger.

Holland March, as with so many other things, was different. Those thoughts clung to Jackson, refusing to be washed away by the morning’s shower. Weighing heavily on his bones as he worked.

“Sorry, day’s just catching up with me. I should head out—“

“Or you could stay.”

The sudden proposal seemed as much of a shock to Holland as it did to Jackson, as if the words were never intended to be audible. Healy allowed himself only the smallest shift in his expression, eyebrows rising quizzically even as his heart beat wildly beneath the Hawaiian print.

“I mean, it’s already late. And we’re working a case tomorrow, anyway. So wouldn’t it be easier if you just hung around?” Holland’s arms waved wildly as he spoke, a denial of whatever Jackson might have read into his objection. All it actually served to accomplish was emptying his glass of its remaining content.

Some of the whiskey had made its way into the pool, at least. The rest, to Holland’s apparent indifference, was currently soaking into the jacket of his suit.

Another sigh, this one more exasperated than the one before.

“Alright,” Jackson’s tone was something like resigned acceptance. “Let’s get you back in the house.” Inappropriate thoughts or not, he’d come to think of Holland as a good friend in the past couple of months. It was almost impossible not to, after everything they’d been through together with the Amelia case.

Healy couldn’t just leave March, drunk as he was, out here by the pool. With the man’s luck (and level of intoxication), Jackson would probably arrive the next morning to find Holland face down at the bottom of the pool, surrounded by old cigarette butts.

Pushing himself to his feet, Jackson extended a hand down, doing his best to ignore the spark that shot up his spine as he grasped March’s hand firmly with his own, hauling the drunk man to his feet.

“The couch is super comfortable, you’ll love it. Waking up in a tub full of water isn’t half bad, either, though I’d recommend removing your suit first,” Holland seemed to be back to rambling comfortably, which served to relax Healy as they stepped back inside the house. “Shoes are a fuckin' pain in the ass to dry, lack of smog-less sunlight in L.A. and all.”

Jackson would put his drunk partner to bed, head home, and feed his fish in the morning while pretending that he’d at no point thought about the way Holland’s mouth would taste against his ( _Like nicotine and whiskey with,_ Jackson suspected, _an undercurrent of sweetness_ ).

They made their way past the kitchen (“Remember that time you broke my arm in here?”) and down the hallway, had nearly reached the master bedroom before Holland tripped over a bump in the carpet. Jackson reacted instinctively, moving quickly to put his body between March and the floor. For his trouble, he was rewarded with an arm-full of drunken P.I. pressed snugly against him.

The way they were standing, with Holland practically nestled in his arms, meant Jackson could feel the bristles of March's mustache against the hollow of his neck. It tickled a bit, made his breath hitch and heart race in a way that confirmed what Jackson had, reluctantly, always known: his thoughts of Holland were not an outlier, but a new and relevant piece of his mental landscape.

Healy was careful to push Holland to his feet, forcing his own body to relax as he created an arm’s length of distance between them. Jackson hoped, against all hope, that Holland was too drunk and oblivious to notice the way Healy’s pants had bulged at their sudden intimacy, accidental as it may have been.

The other man’s unfocused look and gently swaying form were enough to assuage his fears.

They continued their trek, and if Jackson’s hand rested more firmly on Holland’s shoulder, it was only out of fear that the latter would stumble again.

With their destination finally before them, Jackson swung open the door and carefully nudged Holland inside, while he himself remained at the entrance. It shamed him to admit it, but with a closed door and nearby bed, Jackson could not guarantee his resistance to the urges intent on plaguing him. It terrified him, that he could see himself giving in to the repressed lust that was practically guaranteed to shatter everything in his life.

By some miracle, March managed to stagger the rest of the way to his bed, collapsing face down in the mattress with a relieved groan.

_Holland, face buried in a pillow, fingers gripping white-knuckled at the sheets. Jackson over him, chest pressed to his back, hips thrusting in an attempt to elicit further mewls from the younger man-_

The image struck Jackson like a dead weight, and it took everything in his power to not slam the bedroom door and run from the house right then and there. Instead, the heel of his palms rubbed against closed lids. A vain attempt to scrub the mental image from his thoughts.

Jackson was in the process of turning and shutting the door, intent on making a beeline straight for his car, when the sound of Holland’s muffled voice froze him in his tracks. Jesus, wasn’t his imagination doing enough to fuck with him? Did March really have to add fuel to an already incessant fire?

“Pancakes!”

Healy turned slowly back to the other man, sure that he had misheard Holland. “Come again?”

“Pancakes. Holly loves ‘em, and they’re the only thing I can cook half decently without burning down the kitchen.” Holland had managed to only partially unbury his head from the pillow, and was offering Jackson a drunken, hopeful smile. “It really would make her day, having you _and_ pancakes at breakfast.”

Jackson had never been much of a breakfast person. He preferred toast and coffee to an actual meal at the start of the day. But who was he to ruin a father’s well-meaning surprise for his daughter? Even if Holland didn’t remember a lick of their conversation the next day, Jackson would hold him to it.

“Alright. I’ll see you in the morning, March. And I’m holding you to those pancakes.”

Healy finally closed the door behind himself, making a right towards the couch instead of a straight line out the door, which would have been the smart thing to do. He told himself it was for Holly’s sake, that the girl deserved a nice breakfast at home which she hadn’t made herself.

The hardness in his pants and dryness of his mouth said otherwise, but these Jackson would deal with later. There was still a chance that a single touch would break all of this, destroy the make-shift life he had built for himself.

But for now, there were pancakes to cook and a missing person’s case to solve. Jackson resigned himself to a night of fitful sleep on the couch and an uncomfortable wake up in the morning—he would borrow Holland’s shower, take care of things as he had every day for the past month or so, and emerge to a place at the table of the March household.

The rest, as Jackson Healy now allowed himself to hope, would come with time.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted them to make out. All I wanted, from these two old men in the 70s, was for them to make out. Ah, well. This was more of a practice piece to wet my beak with the new characters than anything. I've already got a couple of prompts floating around for the next one. Thank you to everyone for reading <3
> 
> If anyone would be interested in beta'ing for future stuff, I would love a fandom friend to run drafts by!


End file.
